In 1957, Mexico's scrawny players overcame the odds to become the first foreign team to win the Little League World Series. They came to be known as the "Los Pequeños Gigantes," the little giants.

In 1957, Mexico Scrawny players overcame the odds to become the first foreign team to win the Little League World Series

They came to be known as the "Los pequeños gigantes," the little giants.

In baseball, a game filled with fairy tales real and imagined, from Bobby Thomson's "Global Shot Report" to Bernard Malamud's fable "Natural," no story may be better than Monte More inspiring or surprising is the story of the 1957 minor league team in Mexico.

The team was made up mostly of poor kids from industrial cities who had only started playing baseball a few years earlier, cleaning rocks and glass from dirt fields and playing barefoot with homemade balls and gloves. They only imagined major league games, gathered around a radio for Sunday replays of Spanish Brooklyn Dodgers games (Roy Campanella , the Dodgers catcher who played in 1942 and 1943 Monterey game, which fascinated their parents). Even when they made it to the Little League World Series, most of their opponents were over 35 or 40 pounds. But four weeks and 13 games starting in July, they were magical.

Behind the pitching magic of Angel Macias, they defeated La Mesa, California 4-0 on August 23, 1957 before 10,000 players in Pennsylvania Williamsport First team from outside the United States to win the Little League World Series. . Macias pitched the only perfect game in the Little League World Series finale that day, striking out 11 with pinpoint control and hitting all 18 batters in order -- just 6 innings in the minor league game. Balls and pure trickery. LaMesa did not throw to the outfield.

"I think it was as unsettling to me as, if not more than, when our U.S. hockey fans beat the Reds in the Olympics in 1980," W. said William Winokur, who wrote a book and screenplay. Team story. The movie "The Perfect Game" stars Jake T. Austin, Ryan Ochoa and Cheech Marin and opens in theaters this month.

Monterey arrives in Williamsport after an unlikely road trip as players hike across the border from Reynosa to Texas McAllen's Rio Grande Bridge, Hope Playing in a small hotel before their first game. Monterey had acquired a four-team minor league franchise just the year before. They expect to lose and go home.

"We didn't even know Williamsport existed," recalls Jose "Pepe" Mez, a team pitcher and outfielder who now runs a Monterey construction company and owns the Mexican League baseball team Sultanes. "We just [should] be playing in McAllen."

They won their first game in Mexico City, with a 9-2 win over McAllen, a team filled with people just south of the border in the U.S. Working American son. They swept the rest of the regional and state tournaments, winning at least five games until their state semifinals against Houston in Fort Worth. There, Maiz served as an extra-inning reliever, leading them to a 6-4 comeback victory.

Along the way, their visas expired. Only the intervention of the U.S. ambassador to Mexico kept them in the country. They were homesick; only Maiz had ever left Monterey. They often have no money to eat and only eat two meals a day. Maiz said they were fed by the kindness of strangers and new friends who offered them meals at restaurants or gave them a few dollars after a victory.

Despite the challenges, they went 1-2 against the Texas state champions, then beat Mississippi State Biloxi 13-0 and Kentucky Owensboro 3-0, Winning the Southern Regional Championship earned 14 players a bus trip to Williamsport.

Teams from Canada and Mexico have been to the Little League World Series before, but they've never won. International competition was still so new that Monterey played in the Texas State Championship and competed in the United States South Region.

Williamsport's minor league officials gave them new uniforms with "South" on the chest, a symbol of their regional championship. None of them fit; the Monterey boy was too small. They average 4-foot-11 and 92 pounds, while La Mesa averages 5-foot-4 and 127 pounds. After watching La Mesa easily beat Escanaba, Michigan, in the semifinals, Mize was worried. La Mesa star left-hander Joe McKirahan pitched a batter and hit two homers, a towering drive to right field.

"I said to myself, 'Wow, what's going to happen tomorrow?'" he recalled.

html No. 08 Angel Macias is 5 feet 88 pounds tall and is a rare player with ambidextrous hands. On this day, he decided to throw only with his right hand. Lew Riley, his counterpart on the mound, traveled to La Mesa and drilled the first pitch down the first base line. "It was just an inch off," recalled Riley, who now lives in Yorba Linda, California. "That was as close as we got hit."

McKirahan worked the cleanup job for La Mesa before being replaced by the Boston Red Sox Signed and beat Macias both times. "My memory of the Angels during the game was how sneaky and quick he was," he said. "He was the first pitcher we saw with obviously controlled precision. Even at 12 years old, you felt like this kid knew exactly where the ball was going to go. He just controlled us like no one else was close. Ever the same."

Outfielder Richard Gowans didn't attend the La Mesa game, but he saw Macias take hit after hit as first base coach. As the game progressed, the crowd shifted in support of the boys south of the border. "They're fast. They're upbeat. They just have a spirit about them," he said.

Riley was cruising on his own until the fifth inning. The first Monterey batter walked four pitches. The second was a perfect hit between Riley and the third baseman, leaving runners on first and second with no outs. Maiz comes to bat. He saw a fastball from Riley and drilled it into center field for the first score of the game. During the game, Monterey sent nine batters to the plate and struck out four times, shutting out La Mesa on its last chance.

With two outs in the sixth and final inning, Macias pitched three pitches and then returned two strikes to La Mesa's Byron Haggard. For the next pitch, he came back with a curveball. Haggard wavered. The crowd in Williamsport exploded. The same goes for those who listen to Monterey radio broadcasts.

Fifty-two years later, their victory remains the only perfect game in a Little League World Series championship game. After the celebration, Maiz said the team's first thought was to go home. This will take almost a month. Monterey players took a bus to New York to watch a Dodgers game and shop for $40 each (given to them by Macy's ). They then met with President Dwight Eisenhower and Vice President Richard Nixon in Washington, D.C., before traveling to Mexico City for celebrations. When they finally returned to Monterey, they encountered hundreds of thousands of people on the streets.

Each received high school and college scholarships from the Mexican government, although Maiz said only he and one other person went to college. Angel Macias was signed by the Los Angeles Angels and attended their first spring training as a 16-year-old in 1961. He played briefly in the minor leagues for the Angels before entering a career in the Mexican League.

"All the doors were open, everywhere we went we were pointed out or wanted autographs," Macias told an interviewer a few years ago. "People knew our names, and my name is Angel Macias, the champion kid.”

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